English Camp and Pan D'Azucar

A couple of months ago my host-sister applied to an English Camp run by the government and she signed me up to go along and help people practice their English. I'm not sure hyow much good I did, but I certainly had a lot of fun! It's run through a program called English opens doors that brings english speaking volunteers to Chile to help teach English so there was an American couple at the camp. There were also a few English teachers from the Atacam region and one from Santiago who spoke really good English. It was awesome being able to speak English with people though! We also did a lot of fun things like we played pictionary in English and we did karaoke, plus we did field trips to a pool and the beach. I actually met a girl who goes to the ETP, the school I'll be going to next year, and she's really cool! I feel like it will be a lot easier to switch schools now because I'm a lot more comfortable with the culture, the language, the people, and I swear I've become more outgoing although that's not saying much. I'll tell you all about how it goes in a month though! Speaking of school, we tried to go uniform shopping today. I ended up buying some stuff, but the only school related thing was a notebook with a tiger on the cover. Yes, it's awesome. We basically just did some price comparing today, I think we'll actually go buy the stuff tomorrow. It kind of sucks though because it makes it real. Part of me wants school to start, but I'm also starting to enjoy summer a lot. I've been hanging out with some of my friends this week which has been a lot of fun! Not to mention I've started going to swimteam practice. We'll only be going for two weeks because we leave on vacation next weekend, but it something to do. The other weekend we actually went on a camping trip to try out our new tent and stuff. We went to a national park called Pan d'Azucar which is about a three hour drive north of here. It's full of amazigly dry hills and it's right on the ocean. Supposedly there are penguins there, but I didn't see any. Well, I saw some black strips on a rock which technically may have been penguins. We camped right on the beach though and we had asado both nights, but I guess that's what Chileans do when when they go camping. We also went on a hike which ende up more like rock climbing than hiking, but we got some amazing views of the ocean! We went swimming a little bit too, but the waves were really strong wo we didn't go very far in. I think we're ready for our upcoming trip now and I'm incredibly excited about it! I'll probably make a blog post about just that when I get back, so be ready!

Erika Sucks at Keeping her Blog Updated

It's been what, like a month since I've updated this? Yeah sorry about that. I've been really busy with the holidays and everything and this whole summer thing is just making me lazy. My biggest news is that I'm changing schools next year. San Agustin, the school I was at last semester was great, I made awesome friends there and I had a lot of good times, but I think that I'll have good times and awesome friends at the Escuela Técnica Profesional (ETP) too. It's right around the corner from my house and my host-sister is starting there in primero medio next year. The really exciting thing is that I'm going to be studying metalurgy! It's because it was the only curso with enough room, but I get to wear steel toed boots so it's all good. Other than that there was Copiapó's birthday parade on the 8th of December. People danced Cueca and all of the schools were represented by students with their uniforms.
We also had an exciting AFS event last month. The volunteers set up a flee market in Caldera (a port town near here) and all of the exchange students made posters about their countries. After that we had an Asado and we talked with the Chileans postulating to go abroad.
I supose I should mention something about Christmas and New Years too. Well Christmas here is really different in a lot of ways. We got all dressed up and ate dinner on Christmas eve. We had a Peruvian themed appetizer (I love Peruvian food, it's almost all seafood!) Couscous and lamb for the main course and suspiro Limeña which is basically manjar with merengue for desert. After dinner we opened presents and then everyone went to bed at like three in the morning. My host-brother got an X-box Kinect which basically allows you to play video games without using a controller. It's kind of awesome! The day after Christmas we went to my host-family's beach house to celebrate my host-sister's birthday. Out of curiosity, do any of you know of somebody who has fallen out of the top story of a bunk bed while asleep? Let me answer that for you, yes you do. After that fun little experience we went home for a couple of days before heading to La Serena for New Years. We got all dressed up (again, but I was cool with it this time because I had an awesome pruple dress and heels) and went out to a restaurant for dinner. We ate and talked and after midnight everyboy toasted and started dancing. I still don't think I've gotten the hang of this whole dancing thing. It was a lot of fun though! We stayed out until like 4 am. The next day we went to the Valle to visit some of my host-mom's cousins and we had an asado. We also visited a dam with an awesome view of the valle. The following day I went fishing with my host-dad and kind of broke his fishing reel. I'm never going to live that one down! Now we're back in Copiapó and I've been getting a little bit bored of summer. I went to my first yoga class today though! It was fun and I felt really relaxed afterwards! Tomorrow we have the despedida or going away party for the AFSers leaving in January.